I grew up in a home where incoherent positions were taken regularly by our parents during our nightly standoffs at the dinner table. I was told over the years, with no uncertainty, that at three days old I silently declared myself an implacable enemy of my innocent father. My parents, both highly intelligent and well-educated, believed this to the day they died, eighty years later. As a result of this kind of mind-numbing idiocy, from two otherwise smart people, I have a lifelong intolerance for incoherence, particularly when it is being asserted as a fact you’d better goddamned believe, because I insist it’s true.

Spirited debate is sometimes necessary to resolve a disagreement. This process is not always easy or fun. But with good faith we can often thrash out solutions to difficult problems by producing arguments that persuade the other person to consider their position from another angle. This ability to reason a way to compromise is what enables democratic government to function. It stems from mutual, if sometimes grudging, respect and a recognition of objective reality that serves as the baseline for discussion and negotiation. It is the ability to reach consensus, and the logical methods used, that tyrants attack with everything they’ve got. The main weapons of tyranny are incoherence, fear and violence.

Incoherence is absolute, rigid, brazen, unblinking, it never changes its tune. Compromise is never possible when faced with an incoherent position defended to the death. The project of those who argue incoherently is total domination. As a matter of logic, it is impossible to reason with somebody who is rigidly irrational. If they offer no proof of something baseless that they insist is true, and they insist it’s true loudly and proudly anyway, you will never find common ground on anything.

This is the dilemma we find ourselves in today as Americans. One of Charles Koch’s most respected Libertarian thinktanks, The Heritage Foundation (author of Project 2025), maintains a database of election fraud going back to 1982. The documented incidents of voter fraud comprise a microscopic, statistically insignificant fraction of all votes cast. Even Bill Barr, as despicable and bellicose a Christian hypocrite as you will find anywhere, called MAGA claims of massive voter fraud bullshit.

Still, you will hear endless claims of widespread voter fraud used to support various voter suppression schemes in every state controlled by a gerrymandered MAGA legislature. If you can’t win at the ballot box, make an incoherent, but relentless argument, about the need to defeat widespread fraud. Anyone inclined to believe that Blacks, Muslims, Asians, college students, city dwellers, college students, naturalized citizens, gay people, environmentalists, humanists, atheists, those manipulated by Jewish practitioners of the Great Replacement “theory”, enemies of the anonymous, all-seeing Q, child blood drinking pedophiles, etc. commit voter fraud in massive numbers does not need proof. That there is a database, even if it has only 1,200 cases of fraud out of a billion votes cast, is enough to convince them.

It seems to me there are two basic kinds of people in society. One needs, above all, honest, mutual conversation, they are open to changing their minds in light of new information from a trusted source. The other kind is willing to accept lies, no matter how absurd, if there is something to be gained — money, membership in a group, prestige, power, being on the “winning team” — and they tend to be rigidly faithful in their beliefs. Black and white thinking characterizes this second type, a certainty that makes logic irrelevant. This kind also demonstrates a willingness to do whatever must be done to feel part of something greater than themselves.

I’ve heard this incoherent style called the dance of rage. The part of the brain that processes logic and can put things into cause and effect sequence is disabled if the anger center is inflamed. If you need to be right, above all else, you will fight to the death with any weapon that comes to hand. You may not be able to win a debate based on what actually exists, but there’s nothing stopping you from insisting on something that clearly doesn’t exist until the other person’s head simply explodes. If you can’t make the other person’s head explode, physical violence is your next best option, provided you have the numbers on your side.

You can’t reason with someone whose mind is closed. You may be able to find common ground, with enough skill and persistence, since we are all humans and have similar basic needs. Common ground is great, but often not enough to move the needle much. When you see that someone is prepared to assert incoherent talking points in order not to be wrong, that’s a pretty good sign it’s time to smile, wink and say goodnight.